TY - JOUR

T1 - Utilizing domain knowledge

T2 - Robust machine learning for building energy performance prediction with small, inconsistent datasets

AU - Chen, Xia

AU - Singh, Manav Mahan

AU - Geyer, Philipp

N1 - Funding Information: We acknowledge the German Research Foundation (DFG) support for funding the project under grant GE 1652/3-2 in the Researcher Unit FOR 2363 and under Heisenberg grant GE 1652/4-1 .

PY - 2024/4/5

Y1 - 2024/4/5

N2 - Machine learning (ML) applications often require large datasets, a requirement that can pose a major challenge in fields where data is sparse or inconsistent. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach that combines prior knowledge with data-driven methods to significantly reduce data dependency. This study represents a disentangled system compositionality knowledge by the method of Component-Based Machine Learning (CBML) in the context of energy-efficient building engineering. In this way, CBML incorporates semantic domain knowledge within the structure of a data-driven model. To understand the advantage of CBML, we conducted a case experiment to assess the effectiveness of this knowledge-encoded ML approach in scenarios with sparse data input (1 % - 0.0125 % sampling rate) and several typical ML methods. Our findings reveal three key advantages of this approach over traditional ML methods: 1) It significantly improves the robustness of ML models when dealing with extremely small and inconsistent datasets; 2) It allows for efficient utilization of data from diverse record collections; 3) It can handle incomplete data while maintaining high interpretability and reducing training time. These features offer a promising solution to the challenges associated with deploying data-intensive methods and contribute to more efficient real-world data usage. Additionally, we outline four essential prerequisites to ensure the successful integration of prior knowledge and ML generalization in target scenarios and open-sourced the code and dataset for community reproduction.

AB - Machine learning (ML) applications often require large datasets, a requirement that can pose a major challenge in fields where data is sparse or inconsistent. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach that combines prior knowledge with data-driven methods to significantly reduce data dependency. This study represents a disentangled system compositionality knowledge by the method of Component-Based Machine Learning (CBML) in the context of energy-efficient building engineering. In this way, CBML incorporates semantic domain knowledge within the structure of a data-driven model. To understand the advantage of CBML, we conducted a case experiment to assess the effectiveness of this knowledge-encoded ML approach in scenarios with sparse data input (1 % - 0.0125 % sampling rate) and several typical ML methods. Our findings reveal three key advantages of this approach over traditional ML methods: 1) It significantly improves the robustness of ML models when dealing with extremely small and inconsistent datasets; 2) It allows for efficient utilization of data from diverse record collections; 3) It can handle incomplete data while maintaining high interpretability and reducing training time. These features offer a promising solution to the challenges associated with deploying data-intensive methods and contribute to more efficient real-world data usage. Additionally, we outline four essential prerequisites to ensure the successful integration of prior knowledge and ML generalization in target scenarios and open-sourced the code and dataset for community reproduction.

KW - Building engineering

KW - Component-based machine learning

KW - Compositionality

KW - Data utilization

KW - Model organization

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85189755232&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.knosys.2024.111774

DO - 10.1016/j.knosys.2024.111774

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85189755232

VL - 294

JO - Knowledge-based systems

JF - Knowledge-based systems

SN - 0950-7051

M1 - 111774

ER -